Academic Assessment

What are our students learning? How well are our programs doing? How do we know? Every year, academic degree and certificate programs collect and report information about what students know and can do in annual assessment reports. Academic program assessment involves clearly defining learning outcomes and using data on student learning to improve programs. Read about how other programs have made changes.

Assessment Reports and Plans

Academic assessment reports are collected through Hyoka annually, and document student learning from the past academic year. Instructors of the program are encouraged to discuss findings and make a plan of how to use the data to improve the program.

If this is your first time writing a report or assessment planning and would like to meet, please contact assessment@utdallas.edu.

Clarifications on Reports and Plans

Let's think of a report as two parts. Part A consists of what you plan on doing this year for assessment (fill out the column labeled measure). This is also known as an Assessment Plan. Part B then looks at the past year of what you've done for assessment (fill out the columns labeled results and plan along with the summary sections). A full Assessment Report is part A that was filled out last year plus part B that you're filling out this year. Each year you will hand in Part A from the current school year (Assessment Plan) and part B from the previous school year (making it an Assessment Report).

The expectation at UT Dallas is for all program learning outcomes to be assessed every academic year. The manner in which each outcome is assessed is left up to the program.

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Deadlines

Academic program assessment reports for academic year 2025-2026 and plans for academic year 2026-2027 are due on October 26, 2026.

Assessment Resources

Writing a Syllabus

A well-designed syllabus can make your class more enjoyable for you and for your students. A well-written syllabus clearly demonstrates the connection between what the instructor says the course is about and what the students are expected to do in the course. The University of Texas at Dallas provides a syllabus template for all instructors that helps you structure your syllabus (https://provost.utdallas.edu/faculty/resources/syllabus-templates/).

Syllabus Resources

Eberly Center, Carnegie Mellon University. "Align Assessments with Objectives." Eberly Center: Teaching Excellence & Education Innovation. Accessed June 16, 2015. http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/assessments.html.
Lang, James M. "The 3 Essential Functions of Your Syllabus, Part 1." The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 23, 2015. http://chronicle.com/article/The-3-Essential-Functions-of/190243/.
---. "The 3 Essential Functions of Your Syllabus, Part 2." The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 30, 2015. http://chronicle.com/article/The-3-Essential-Functions-of/228909/.

Learning Outcomes

One of the more challenging tasks for new and experienced faculty alike is writing student learning outcomes. Course learning outcomes should make it clear to students what they will be able to do because of what they have learned by the end of the course. Strong learning outcomes are student-centered, comprehensive, aligned to program outcomes, degree appropriate, and measurable (please see the Learning Outcome Rubric for more detail about each of these characteristics).

Student Learning Outcomes Resources

Program Learning Outcome Rubric https://dox.utdallas.edu/chart1223
Course Learning Outcome Rubric https://dox.utdallas.edu/chart1224
Office of Assessment Workshops (contact Gloria Shenoy, Director of Assessment, gloria@utdallas.edu, for the next scheduled workshop)

Using the Information from Assessment Reports

You may be asked on a semi-regular basis to write a report for your program about assessment in your course. To write this report you will need to gather information about student work in your class, analyze it, and then consider future changes.

At the program level, you may find that there are larger changes that need to be made based on the program assessment data that was gathered. Maybe your faculty see a need for a new course or another curriculum change, or perhaps the course descriptions need to be changed in order to address some new challenges. You should meet as a group to discuss possible changes based on assessment data.

Using Assessment Data Resources:

Assessment Office University of Hawai'i at Manoa. "Using Program Assessment Results to Improve Student Learning," March 2013. https://manoa.hawaii.edu/assessment/workshops-events/using-results-to-improve/.

On the Importance of Faculty Involvement in Assessment

The word "assessment" often calls to mind ideas about external accrediting agencies and legislative oversight. On the most basic level, though, assessment includes what faculty members already do in the classroom every day. It is important that faculty drive how we do the assessment that affects your courses and programs.

Faculty Involvement Resources

Hutchings, Pat. "What New Faculty Need to Know About Assessment." NILOA, Spring 2011. https://dox.utdallas.edu/aplan1510.

Glossary of Assessment Terms

Term	Definition
Assessment	"Assessment is the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving student learning and development." (Palomba & Banta, 1999, p. 4) "Assessment is the process of providing credible evidence of resources implementation actions, and outcomes undertaken for the purpose of improving the effectiveness of instruction, programs, and services in higher education." (Palomba & Banta, 2014, p. 2)
Benchmark	The level of accomplishment against which student work is measured.
Course assessment	Focused on whether a specific course is meeting its stated student learning outcomes.
Curriculum Map	A chart that shows which courses in a curriculum cover which program-level student learning outcomes.
Direct measures	These are any measures that are directly related to what students do: exams, essays, portfolios, etc.
Formative assessment	Ongoing assessment of student learning outcomes while the learning is still taking place.
Indirect measures	These are any measures that are derived from perceptions about student learning: exit interviews, evaluations, course grades, assignment grades, etc.
Program assessment	"uses the department or program as the level of analysis. Can be quantitative or qualitative, formative or summative, standards-based or value added, and used for improvement or for accountability. Ideally program goals and objectives would serve as a basis for the assessment. Example: how sophisticated a close reading of texts senior English majors can accomplish (if used to determine value added, would be compared to the ability of newly declared majors)." (Leskes 2002)
Student Learning outcomes	Student-centered, comprehensive, aligned, degree-appropriate, and measurable statements about what student can know and do by the end of a course of study.
Triangulation	A validity test by multiple data collection methods to ensure the consistency of results (quantitative and qualitative, direct and indirect).